3 by 4 Technology
by Kanoe Nanashichi
Summary: Hoagie is always the one fixing Hippy-Hop, Kuki is always watching him, Wally has something to say. Very mild language hence to Kplus , implied 4x3, implied spoilers and Fluff.


A.N., It was when I ran upon the running gag of the infamous Hippy-Hop that I decided... Hoagie and Kuki probably spend quite _some_ time together fixing it. Once that idea took root, it refused to go away. Hence, this oneshot is an offering to appease the inspiration Gods, hopefully they'll give my brain back.

Hoagie took a glance over his broad shoulder, confirming his suspicions, before turning back to his work. The glare he felt on his back was unsettling though, and within seconds he was looking behind him again, setting his tools down with a clank, incredulous.

"Can I help you Numbah 4?" He eventually quipped, and Kuki too turned up to look at their comrade.

"Oh, hi Wally!" She squealed, waving, while the blonde boy simply turned with a huff, arms crossed and feet tapping, inducing a confused head-tilt from the tall girl.

The defeated ruins of Kuki's robot rabbit Hippy-Hop lay smoking in its' burrow of a garage, still in decemation from its' most recent defeat. The rabbit was one of the few robots that Hoagie could have fixed without referencing its' blueprints, for one because it was one of the oldest pieces of 2-by-4 technology in the Sector V treehouse, but also, most probably, due to the fact that every single time Kuki's only personal robot was commissioned, it was almost immediately put out of order.

Hence to the little facepalm Hoagie gave himself whenever the Hippy-Hop's garage door so much as opened.

Wally stayed where he was, standing behind Kuki, who'd stayed to oversee operations. Sector V's head mechanic took quick glances between his teammates before immediately realizing what the deal was, and his eyes narrowed behind his goggles in a nefarious grin.

Wally however, took none of that. "Oi, Numbah 2, you're gonna teach _me_ 'ow ta fix that darnded thing, roight now!" He demanded, with a stomp of his foot.

Kuki stood where she was, stunned, before a bemused giggle erupted from her lips, and she waved her arm dismissively, sending an oversized sleeve flapping. "Oh don't be silly Wally, Numbah 2 fixes everything! You're in charge of breaking stuff, not fixing it!" The giggling then continued despite Wally looking as if he'd just been struck by lightning.

"I... I do NOT break EVERYTHING!" Hoagie noted momentarily that Wally seemed to have a hard time deciding if he ought to have placed his emphasis on the word "not", or "everything", the spluttering surely didn't help. "But _you_ heard whot I said Numbah 2, teach me 'ow ta' fix that thing!" He hollered, "Or I'm gonna... I'm gonna... Well just do it! Ca'mon!"

Hoagie raised his hands into the air, dropping his tools. "Whoah, whoah, chill down Numbah 4, I'll do it, just come over here already."

Wally gave a loud "Hmph!" before making his way over to where their resident mechanic was hunched over Hippy-Hop's power grid. Kuki tilted her head to a side, rocking back and forth on her heels with her hands behind her back, seemingly pondering.

After awhile though, she spoke up. "Alright! I'll go watch TV then, the Rainbow Monkeys show is about to start!"

With that, she skipped off back into the TV room outside, and Wally stubbornly turned his head back to Hoagie. Only then did he realize that their mechanic had long since left the robot, and gone to retrieve the dusty disused blueprints of Hippy-Hop.

"Why're we still using this cruddy machine anyway?" He huffed as Hoagie dusted off the large sheets of paper. "It just gets wrecked every time we use it, why does she even bother."

Hoagie lifted the plans onto his desk and flipped on the lights as Wally came closer to study the blueprints. "Well, it _is_ her oldest and favorite robot yanno." He shrugged, and retrieved a pencil from the side of his desk. "Plus it looks like a rabbit, there's no way she's gonna stop using it if it looks like a rabbit."

Wally huffed, unimpressed, "Why won't she jus' get a cruddy Rainbow Monkey robot then." He muttered under his breath, but immediately stopped when he realized that Hoagie could hear him clearly.

The boy stared at his comrade for a second or two from behind his flying goggles, and after that pause in silence, turned his attention to the blueprints. "Alright, so, crash course in 2-by-4 technology, red wires are power, blue ones are the leads, the black ones are earth wires so they'll kill you."

"Wait, whot, kill me?" Wally exclaimed, before Hoagie shot him the "be quiet and listen" look.

"Welcome to my world."

Abigail turned out of the kitchen and entered the TV room to the sight of Kuki seated on the sofa, channel surfing with a bowl of cereal cradled in her lap. She slid herself into the seat next to her friend and poked the straw into her juice box. "Wuz' on?"

"Oh, nothing much." Came the reply. "But Hoagie's fixing Hippy-Hop."

"Oh ok." She said, reclining into the sofa's soft backsupport, before she sat up suddenly, almost knocking her juice box onto the floor. "Wayt a minit, then why ain'tchu in the garage? Ah thawt you always wanted ta' oversee 'im fixin' yo' rabbit?"

"Oh, nah it's ok, Wally's in there, he'll keep an eye on it." She giggled, but the look on absolute horror Abigail's face only intensified.

"Mista' Destruct-O-Rama's in there? You ain't neva gow'n see that rabbit again!" She yelled, before jumping up off the sofa and sprinting for the garage half expecting something to blow up in there any minute. Kuki watched in silence, head innocently tilted to a side as she took another mouthful of cereal.

When Abigail burst through the doors of the garage in the middle of shouting a long and extended "STAAWP!", Hoagie and Wally, both with engine grease smears all over their hands and on their shirts, wiped their foreheads and looked up at her.

"Oh hi Numbah 5, whatcha doing?" Hoagie smiled, while Wally made a gallant attempt of swiftly hiding the wrench in his hand behind his back.

"But, I, er, uhm, I..." She tripped over her tongue the moment she saw that the garage, in contrast to her expectations, hadn't become a pile of rubble. A moment of shaking her head though, and she was back on her case. "Numbah 4, whutchu doin man? You ain't suppose' ta be in 'ere?"

He attempted to cover his tracks, and opened his mouth to explain, but Hoagie stepped in right in front of him. "Oh, Numbah 4 just wanted me to teach him how to fix Hippy-Hop you see?"

Abigail raised an eyebrow, leaning on the sidepost of the door. "Yeah, _that_ ah see, but wut ah DON'T see is _why_." She muttered, her arms crossing loosely in front of her chest as she spoke.

That was when Nigel's head appeared behind that of Abigail.

"Oh you _don't_ see why? It's pretty obvious to me." He grinned, and Numbah 2 smiled back at their intrepid leader, expression devious. After a second or two of glancing between Nigel and Hoagie, Abigail too turned to Numbah 4, her expression mimicking that of the boys.

"Oh umbah 5 seezit _now._"

All the while, Wally stood knee-deep in the wreck of Hippy-Hop, looking as if he'd accumulated enough embarrassed rage to spontaneously combust. "GIT OWTA HERE, ALL OF YA!" He hollered, and the rest of the group took off from the garage, giggling and jabbing at one another.

Kuki turned her head away from the TV to see her group mates running from Hippy-Hop's garage, laughing and grinning, especially when they saw her sitting there staring back at them. Nothing was said though, and Kuki too laughed, brushing off her confusion, and turned back to the TV as they retired to their respective rooms.

The moment the last room door swung shut, she kicked herself back up on her feet and headed towards the garage, humming the Rainbow Monkeys theme song to herself all the way.

"Stupid..." There was a loud crash. "Cruddy ol'..." A clang, a harsh buzz, then another crash. "Heap 'o junk..." A snap, more harsh buzzing, yet another crash, then the defeated rolling sound of a metal plate on a concrete floor. "Oh dangid just WORK already!" He yelled, raising his wrench in the air as if it were the hammer of Thor.

"Hi Wally!" Kuki giggled as she walked calmly into the garage, and the blonde boy turned around, the frustration on his face immediately dissipating.

"Whu... Whot's a gerly gerl like you doin' in 'ere? Git out." He stammered, but even the grease stains couldn't hide the blush on his face. "I'll get it done so just go along, watch your cruddy TV show thing." He jumped off the hull of Hippy-Hop, walking towards the desk, on which the blueprints were generously sprawled.

Kuki stayed where she was, but knelt in front of the toolbox Hoagie had left behind.

She took a brief look at the wreckage, just as Wally was making his way back from the desk, tools in hand, the moment he came into hearing range though, she spoke. "That smells like electrical smoke, so I'm guessing the power grid short-circuited when Hippy was hit by that giant concrete leg thingie on the walking boarding-school. So all you'll need to do is find some new wire with proper insulation and reattach the power lines with some solder, then straighten out the hull with some hammering, and repair the leaks in the hydraulics. That should be easy enough to do but we'll need the special neumatic ram thingie in Hoagie's room."

Wally stared, unsure of what to say or do. Kuki knelt next to the tool box and pointed at a simple but dangerous looking instrument. "There, that one's the soldering iron, and here's the roll of solder that Hoagie normally uses for Hippy-Hop."

More awkward stares, and Wally took a look at the garage door, ensuring no one else was around, before he walked over to where his partner knelt.

"Which one?"

It was several hours later when the duo completed what work would have taken Hoagie about 45 minutes tops, but Hippy-Hop looked to be in satisfactory state, and Kuki, given the grime on Wally's hands, pushed the button to close Hippy-Hop's garage door. Wally looked up to find that Kuki seemed well prepared to just hop off, and called out to her.

"Wait a minute!" She paused mid-step, turning around to look at her teammate. "I uh, I... I mean, you, how did you... Well, how'd you know how ta... Well, fix that thing?"

Kuki lifted a sleeve-covered finger to her lips in thought, and after a moment or two of pouting, simply smiled back at the shorter boy. "Well, cause I always watch Numbah 2 fix Hippy-Hop, so I kinda just learned how to make him feel better!"

"_Feel_ betta?" Wally gagged. "Dummy, Hippy-Hop is a _robot_, it won't feel nothin'."

She turned around with a wide smile on her face, and for a moment Wally felt as if what he'd just said went entirely over her head. Still though, he couldn't find it in himself to be mad at a smiling face like that. "Well, I care about Hippy-Hop, that's why when Hippy-Hop is sick, I wanna make him feel better! That's why I watch and remember!" She giggled, and turned to walk away, leaving Wally where he stood, none the wiser, and none the cleaner either.

Regardless, he raised a grimy hand to his already soiled chin, pondering to himself.

"Hmm... Fixing people you care about huh..." He mused, taking off in the direction of his room.

"I wonder if there are people who do that for a living."

Fin. 8 Mar, 2012


End file.
